A Year in Learning at Elk Grove: Dual Credit College Composition-Students

By Madison Reed, Jake Mizialko, Alexandra Glinski and Mark Heintz

Emily Mikuzis reflected on learning in a previous post, but what do the students think? A group of teachers and students explore what learning is. From the students perspective, for deep learning to occur, they've got to be interested in it.  They have to find meaning to them.  Here are just a few highlights before you read:

• This story’s argument really made me think about how much meaning I give things in my life and my perspective. 

• I love the freedom of ideas and creativity it allows us as students to have most times.

• I hope that students will be able to branch off of those three things and be able to incorporate it into their own writing.

• I would hope to find a style of writing/narrative the best suits me.

Madison

What did you learn in this lesson?

In this lesson, I learned about narratives and arguments from a deeper perspective. We read a passage called ‘This is Water’ by David Foster Wallace. The story touched pretty heavily on the ideas of “you control the meanings on everything in the world” and “you control your own perspective and decide how much meaning everything gets”. The whole class was split into groups. After listening to this piece and annotating things we found important in the text, everyone in each group shared a sentence, phrase and word from the reading that we thought was important and at the end, the whole class discussed thoughts on the reading as a whole. This story’s argument really made me think about how much meaning I give things in my life and my perspective. I enjoyed this narrative a lot and I loved the message/argument it brought with it.

What do you hope to learn for the next time?

I hope to learn more about the other types of writings that are out there. Writing is one of my favorite things to do in school. I love the freedom of ideas and creativity it allows us as students to have most times. Also, I hope to learn how to better my writing abilities. So far in my senior year here at EGHS, College Composition has been one of my favorite classes and generally my favorite English class I've taken.

Jake
What did you learn in this lesson?

During this lesson, we, as a class, learned how to fully understand a story by highlighting significant words, phrases, and sentences. These three things helped us figure out what the narrative, argument, and effect were on the reader. This way of annotating shows that students are able to concisely get to the point while still annotating and understanding the story completely. This was a unique lesson because once the student finished reading on their own they were able to talk to their group members to hear what they took out of the story and how they perceived it.

What do you hope to learn for the next time?

For the next lesson, I hope to learn how you can you words, phrases, and sentences to help you learn more about the message that the author was trying to get across to his readers. I hope that students will be able to branch off of those three things and be able to incorporate it into their own writing. By practicing this task, this will allow students to strengthen their writing abilities and easily identify key parts of a story.

Alexandra
What did you learn in this lesson?

In this lesson, I learned how different narratives can be used to make an argument. We listened and read through a couple of texts which all had addressed an argument, but all using different narratives. Individually, we would complete a reading guide where we, the students, had to annotate for a sentence, a phrase, and one keyword from the text that we believed was important. By identifying these different things, we are able to identify what the argument of the text was and how effective the narrative was. While repeating this process a few times, I learned how narrative is a key figure to an essay and how a good narrative will help your argument, which together can create a successful piece of writing.

What do you hope to learn for the next time?

In the next lesson, I would hope to find a style of writing/narrative the best suits me. Trying and testing different essay structures will be a big part of finding out what I like. I want to be able to write an effective essay that not only has a good narrative but also gets my argument across. Hopefully, in our next few writing assignments, my best style of writing will become more clear to me.

A Year in Learning at Elk Grove: Dual Credit College Composition-Teachers

By Emily Mikuzis and Mark Heintz

In the continued effort of defining learning at Elk Grove, Emily Mikuzis graciously invited me into her class and reflected on the learning in her dual credit College Composition class.

From my point of view, students were finding their voice.  Not an easy thing to do.  But in this case, students had agency: they wanted to know how to express their opinions in their voice. Why shouldn't they?  They were finding their voice. In her reflection, Emily told me that last year, almost all of her students' first paper sounded the same. It didn't matter the student's experience, the voice was the same.  She thought back on why this happened. She was guiding them too much, created an environment that favored writing was easy and offered little opportunity to truly express themselves.  This year, her goal is to change that. She wants to empower her students and at the beginning of the year, to find their voice in writing.

I'm very jealous of her students as they get to explore who they are and how best to express themselves.  We would all be lucky to have that opportunity.  Right now, learning looks like a personal journey and struggle towards what is meaningful to each student and how best to express it.

What did learning look like in the lesson? 

Emily: This semester, I am exploring ways to allow students to have greater confidence in their writing by increasing their investment and creating opportunities for student choice. 

In this lesson, students worked collaboratively to identify how narrative and argument, which are typically taught separately, can be used together to create an effective piece of writing. 

Students individually identified the story and argument present in a selection from Persepolis. I wanted students to begin to see that stories - even brief ones, can support a powerful argument. In this step, student learning looks like quiet reflection - low-risk exposure to a new topic. 

Next, students read and annotated a part of David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech at Kenyon College. While they annotated, they watched this corresponding video clip: "This Is Water." Students annotated for keywords, phrases, and sentences. In this step, student learning looked like gathering information to share with their group. Learning looked like reading to understand. 

Finally, students worked through a text rendering protocol with peers. Students shared a single word, phrase, and sentence without commentary in order to identify the big picture meaning of the text. In this step, learning looked like working together to piece together and refine understanding of a text. 

Student learning culminated in identifying the narrative elements and argument present in the piece. From there, they can compare the structure to two texts which incorporate the same elements but have different purposes and structures. David Sedaris’s essay “Jesus Shaves” and a story from The Moth, "Whatever Doesn't Kill Me."

What do you hope to do for the next time? 

Emily: Through the comparison of three engaging texts with very different structures and purposes, I hope to give students options for attacking their first writing assignment, Narrative as Argument. My hope is that students will begin to build confidence to make their own stylistic and structural choices in writing assignments. I hope to, throughout the semester, continue to create opportunities for students to work together to build understanding and hopefully begin to develop their own writer's voice through greater investment in our writing tasks.


You can read last week's post on learning here. 

Learning for Themselves

By Mark Heintz

I shared my last post about letting go of prescriptive lesson planning with my dad.  I was like a proud puppy.  He was a teacher, and no matter how old I get, I still want him and my mom, to know what I am doing and be proud of it.  However, most of the time, I don't share my work with them...I think that might have been a sign that I hadn't really been excited about what I was doing.

Anyways, my dad's response made me well up a bit.  Always spot on, he said,"Your students must be thinking about how learning is really for themselves."  Mic drop.

Learning for Themselves

I'm on the right track and I'm chasing this high.  So...how do I continue to create conditions that keep the learning in the kiddos' hands? Keep in mind that in the first week of school, my students and I came to common ground on what meaningful learning is.

1. For learning to occur, we have to want to learn it: interesting.
2. The learning has to be useful in their lives: relevance.
3. It has to be a struggle and should force them to change: challenging. 

With my focus in mind, I was ready for the second week of school.  During that week, I laid out the driving question for the course: To what extent can we do whatever we want to the Earth and its people?

Not easy. So, it's challenging.  There are so many possible directions to go in; interesting.  And, man, is it relevant to their daily lives.

I had the students put two continuums down, one for the treatment of the Earth and one for the treatment of people.  Some said we can and should do whatever we want to the Earth and to people=100%.  Others had a much different outlook on it.  Each student was in a different place.

Then came their own questions.  Based on the driving question, the students generated their own questions.

  

From there, they researched their question and did a quick write up, they had a little less than two days to do this.  The only criteria I gave them: at least 200 words and any articles they read must be posted alongside their writing.  

The Result

This process resulted in the best writing I've ever had in teaching the course. It was interesting to read. Not really a shocker when you allow students to write about things they are interested in.  Seriously, kids wrote more than had to.  I didn't say how or if it would be graded.  They just explored.   I'm so proud of the work they did.  I just walked around the room and gave guidance when they asked for it and probed what they were researching.  

Here is one sample that is a first draft and unedited. 

Why are people treated unfairly?

Being treated unfairly happens a lot everywhere in the world, it is probably happening right now. But it mostly occurs in lower-income countries and mostly aimed at women. Like in Saudi Arabia, they allowed Women to start driving JUST now instead of in the earlier years which is because of the government choice that is controlling everything and controlling who.

Like another example: Malala, everyone knows about her story and why she was shot. Because she was a girl that wanted the same education that boys have but couldn’t get it until her story was heard around the world. Now girls where Malala live have education.

Some people in the workforce are also being treated unfairly, how? Because of the boss and how he or she wants his/her way to get more money, or maybe the boss is being respectful to one worker than the other that is being unfair or biased.

My last example is still happening today in America is police brutality, white officers killing black people. It is very common here and we are still wondering why it is still happening but some people know why, because of racism. Racism is still happening today as no surprise either against African Americans, Hispanics, Middle East people and more. We are still being treated unfairly because of our race that somehow makes people uncomfortable.

There are many different answers to why people are still being treated unfairly, is it because of racism, biases or the government's rules that are making these things happen today in the world.

A Year in Learning at Elk Grove: Intro to Engineering Part 1-Students

By Alexander Danan, Margi Patel, Ryan Libiano and Mark Heintz

Patrick McGing and I gave our insight into what learning looked like in Patrick's Intro to Engineering class. But what do the students think?  What do they want the class to be? If the focus of a school is meant to be on the learning, especially student learning, shouldn't we spend time getting their feedback?

A group of teachers met with me last May and agreed on a common mission and vision.  Part of that vision included partnering with students in an effort to document and define learning at Elk Grove.  Each week, as a teacher and I share our thoughts on learning, students who are in the teachers class I visit will do the same.  This week, three students in Patrick's class shared their thoughts on the first days of school. Here is what they had to say.

Ryan

What did you learn in this lesson?

Although we did not yet dive too deep into the engineering process or have started any projects, I found the class still to be engaging in the sense that we were able to reflect upon how we do now and how we will do in the future (as in our future work life etc). Certain topics such as skills and interests seemed to have no meaning in the basics of the design process or literally anything that relates to engineering, but I finally realized that these topics would soon help me become aware of what strengths I have and fields they were applicable in. Furthermore, the class will teach me how to write a resume and prepare myself for future endeavors throughout my adult life.

What do you hope to learn for the next time?

Although we did not cover any engineering related topic in this lesson, I am still very excited to learn more about how to write a resume and cover letter and prepare myself for the future. Along with that, I am still very excited to dive deep into the engineering process and design my first object/thing (I don’t know what it is yet). Another huge hope is to finally use machinery such as the shopbot, CNC mill, Laser cutter, etc.

Margi

What did you learn in this lesson?

It's only been a few days so we haven't really started yet. I found some things interesting such as how to operate the machines and how to write the resume. We are going to start a project very soon so I'm really excited to find out how to do the designs and stuff. We also learned the things that we are going do it throughout the semester and I found most of the things very interesting.

What do you hope to learn for the next time?

I hope to learn how to use the 3D printer and the new technology. By end of the semester, I would love to know what I should put it in my resume and cover letter. I'm a senior and I'm glad I took this class because I'm sure it's going to help figure what I want to do after high school in specifically engineering. I'm excited to learn more about the topics that we talked about. I'm also excited to see what interests me the most.

Alex

What did you learn in this lesson?

During the class I learned what our class is going to be and some of the things that we will be using in for the future. One of the things that stuck out to me was learning how to make a resume. Since I'm only 14 and don't know anything about resumes or jobs, this was a nice piece of information that will be able to help me throughout life since people need jobs to make money and live. Another thing was knowing that we will be able to use a lot of cool tech that I've never even touched before.

What do you hope to learn for the next time?

What I'm interested in is going through the design process to create some different but amazing things. I also want to learn more about how to use all the machines to make 2D into 3D.  One of the biggest things that I hope I learn next time or later in the year is all the small things that I'm able to do while designing program so I can make what I've already made and make it better to the best of my potential.

A Year in Learning at Elk Grove: Intro to Engineering Part 1-Teachers

By Patrick McGing and Mark Heintz

This is the first of hopefully, fingers crossed, a weekly series of teachers and students at Elk Grove reflecting on what meaningful learning looks like in practice.  A group of teachers all met with me in May of last year and we agreed on a common mission and vision for the 2018-2019 school year.

OUR MISSION

To document and define learning at Elk Grove High School throughout the 2018-2019 school year in order to increase student learning, give professionals autonomy, increase trust in our learning community, and foster a sense of personal-intellectual collegiality within the building across departments.

OUR VISION

• Connect teachers across all disciplines in the building in a quarterly meeting
• Weekly class visits and sharing video segments with the larger community of the learning taking place.  
• Involve the PTC by sharing the narrative of learning at Elk Grove and inviting them to possible future meetings with staff and students 
• Document and share a weekly blog post that involves student and teachers 

Throughout the year, we are guided by the following questions

• How do we define learning?
• What conditions maximize student learning? 
• How do we build trust with one another to increase professional autonomy and increase transparency? 
• How do we share our narrative of learning with the larger community and stakeholders?

In this first post, Patrick McGing graciously "volunteered" to be first.  Patrick is just awesome.  Ever since he stepped foot in the building, he's been asking the right questions and is focused on learning instead of teaching.  He's in the trenches with his students, figuring things out alongside them.  He's ever reflective and constantly making changes to his already amazing classes. 

The Career Technical Education department continues to be cutting edge.  Seriously, it's an amazing place to be and I'm grateful every time I'm down there. I think the school placed most of the CTE classes away from the rest of the "core" classes so we wouldn't be as jealous.  Everyone in that department is so progressive and I'm blown away when I go down there.  But as this post is focusing on Patrick, his focus continues to be on the learning. Every time I connect with him, I wish I could be as focused on learning as he is.  

What did learning look like in the lesson? 

McGing: For this lesson, students filled out a questionnaire asking about what their interests are, activities/sports they participate in, employment history, volunteering experiences, skills they have obtained from previous courses/extracurriculars, awards/achievements, words/phrases that describe them, and goals for the year. I wanted this to be an opportunity for me to get to know students better, but more importantly for students to reflect and document themselves. Little did students know, this was going to lead to the development of a cover letter and resume.

Therefore, learning looked like reflection and basic goal setting.

Learning looked liked seeing how small reflections and goal setting applies in the larger picture of District 214 goals and their own future goals.

Learning looked like how starting small and documenting where students begin will, in the end, help document personal growth.

What do you hope to do for the next time? 

McGing: At Elk Grove, the majority of teachers, including myself in Technology Education adopted Standards Based Grading as the majority of the learning in our classrooms revolves around learning and developing essential skills (“Standards”). These essential skills sometimes get lost in “day to day school.” Therefore, part of my reasoning for having students create a resume and document their skills is so they know where they are starting the year off. As we continue the school year and cover more essential skills I would like to have students add to their resume; along with anything else that applies from school, extracurriculars, or other.

Students can then begin to see growth, even if they started with a very bare resume, personal growth will be documented.

On top of this, as one of District 214’s goals is career ready and we fall in a Career and Technical Educational course, developing resume building skills will further help students as they begin looking for careers that require the same skills they have developed in their CTE courses and others.

Finding the Purpose in Learning

By: Rachel Vissing (Barry)

Last week, I began my ninth year of teaching.  In this past few months, I have encountered a lot changes in my life: I got married, I stepped down from coaching track & field, I survived my first year teaching an AP course, and I increased the time in my role as Teaching & Learning Facilitator.  I notice that the first thing I mention is something personal.  This is unlike me when I'm in my "professional mode".  I have always thought of myself as driven, focused, Type A, etc.  For a while, I believed that I could separate the two, especially in the blogging universe, however, I now have found this not to be true.  We educators are people, first and foremost.  Our students are people, first and foremost.

In reflecting on these ideas over the summer, especially in seeing my students AP scores two days before my wedding, my colleague Mark Heintz wrote a blog post that really resonated with how I was feeling.  Why do I look at my students in terms of scores?  Whether AP or SAT or an exam score, I seem to focus a lot on numbers.  This made me think...do I see my students as people or as a number?  

Not only do Mark and I work together in the education setting, but we also coach the girls' cross country team together.  One thing that Mark has always pushed me to do in all aspects of my life is to determine a purpose.  "What is the purpose of your course?" or "What is your purpose of this workout?" or "What is the purpose of school?"

Well...what IS the purpose of school?



If I were to answer this question myself, I truly can't answer it succinctly.  I have tried.  Even if I try to break it down to "What is the purpose of math?" or more specifically "What is the purpose AP Statistics?", I get stuck in too much ambiguity: what do "understanding", "good", "respectful", and "knowledgeable" mean? 

As you can see, I am a long way from finding my purpose.  That is my goal this year, to develop a personal "mission statement" for my own learning as well as what I want my students to learn.  The one thing I do know is that I want my focus of my purpose to always view my students as individuals.

Letting Go

by Mark Heintz

I'm a planner.  I plan my day. I pack my lunches and set out what I'm wearing for the week. And, I plan as many lessons before the school year starts. A few years ago, I told my dad, who was a teacher for 33 years, how planned out I typically was.  His comment was, "Robo-teacher, huh."

I'd like to think I'm not Type A, but I'm good at kidding myself.  The problem, though, the more I define what I value, I find that being so prescriptive goes against my beliefs about learning.  In a previous post, I wrestled with my values around learning.  Now, I'm questioning how I was able to plan almost the whole year before I'd even met my students.  Shouldn't who they are matter in the plan? I'm glad I am no longer a Type A person; otherwise, I might get stressed out by that comment...

The Problem: Controlling Learning

It's hard to admit it, but the major problem is me.  Since I'm such a planner, I think having the lessons all planned out helps students.  And to some extent, it does because it's easy for them. I'm essentially taking the thinking out of the classroom.  By planning the second Tuesday in October before the school year starts, I'm dictating everything.  Kids just have to sit there and wait for me to tell them what they have to do and the way they have to think.  While the students are good at doing what I'm asking, I don't think that's learning.

Last year, I was really lucky to have a kid named Robert.  Robert was a reader.  Which was great, because this year the plan was to read Persepolis. I thought I'd hook Robert. Use something he was already doing, although I'd already planned on doing the book before knowing he was such a reader. But, Robert was reading a different book.  And one day, as he read his own book, I asked him if he finished Persepolis.  He told me, no and then asked why my book was better than his.  He wasn't being disrespectful, he just really wanted to know why he couldn't read his book.  I could have gone into teacher mode, but I didn't... only because I didn't have a great answer.

Back to Learning: The First Days of School 

How can I still plan everything, if that type of teaching goes against my beliefs about learning? Now that I've come to terms with my values, I basically have to throw out my plans. It's a struggle to do it. I had to make a new calendar, but I only could put down a few ideas.  As I continue to tell my Type A mindset to shut it, I'm keeping my focus where I want it: on learning.

So, what do I do?  For the first two days of school, my "plan" was to have the students and me come up with a common definition of learning and pledge to hold each other to that definition throughout the year.

To get at this, I asked them to define learning.  Here were a few of their responses:

I asked the students a few follow-up questions related to their definitions and almost immediately their definitions crumbled.

The students had been in school for the last eight or nine years, and no one had a great definition of learning.  Next steps: they read my blog post about learning.  Here it is again if you want to read it.

I asked them to tell me what they thought of my defintions.

We all talked about the post and my definition. We were starting to come to some agreements on learning. To push them a little more, they read two more excerpts. One for Seymour Sarason and Carla Shalaby.  

Your beliefs came from your experience, and you should change those beliefs on the basis of new experience and not because someone says you are mistaken.  Your obligation to yourself and your teachers is to listen, to “hear” what they say, to reflect on it, not passively to assume that the voice of authority requires submission.  Productive learning is a struggle, a willing struggle from which comes a sense of change and growth. It makes no difference whether you are a first-grader or someone entering a teacher preparation program.  Productive learning has its joys, but they are a consequence of intellectual and personal struggle.-Sarason

Reading #3: Schools engender trouble by using systems of reward and punishment to create a certain kind of person-”a good student”-a person suited for the culture of schooling.  Good students sit still; they listen; they follow directions; they conform; they take order; they adhere to the terms and standards of childhood as a marginal social position and to the whiteness as the ideal.  Students do well in school and will be counted as good when they allow others to exercise power over them.  -Shalaby 

As they read, I asked them to pick out something that struck them.

The conversations were amazing.  The students saw that learning should change you and be a personal struggle. One of the things I had to point out to them, even though they wrote it down, was that teachers should listen. They were taken aback by that.  Teachers are learners, too. If I am going to be less of a planner, I need to listen a lot more.

They also saw that schools favor compliance.  Schools reward the passive thinkers and the planned instruction.  But this year, I want the classroom to be about their personal journeys with learning.  I need them to hold me to that.  So, in the end, the class came to a few conclusions that we are a going to try to hold ourselves to.  

1. For learning to occur, we have to want to learn it: interesting.
2. The learning has to be useful in their lives: relevance.
3. It has to be a struggle and should force them to change: challenging. 

The first two days were amazing. It wasn't easy and it took a bit to get them to buy into what I was trying to do.  But, there was a major power shift.  The students have the power now.  They are in control of their learning, and it is a very freeing feeling for me.  I am not sure I've been this excited about "teaching" in a long time.  I'm glad I'm letting go, but now I'm off to make my lunches and pack my clothes for the week

Side note: During the last two days, my students 

• read articles that were at 12th and 13th grade level
• read more than my students historically have in the first two days of school
• wrote more than my students historically have in the first two days of school

What do you mean by learning?

By Mark Heintz

My wife calls me an idea man.  I have ideas for everything and because of that, I use Pinterest. Yes, I use Pinterest. I use it to document and store a lot of those ideas, and I love it.  To add fuel to the fire, I perseverate a lot and will repeat the same idea over and over again, but with just a slight variation to make it worth repeating.  From time to time (ok, every day), I talk to my wife about my ideas for education.  I am very lucky to have her.  In addition to her, I'm fortunate to have a great support group in my professional community who are willing to listen and discuss my ideas.  But, as I enter my thirteenth year of teaching, I realize that I've had a lot of ideas I thought would be silver bullet fixes to problems in the classroom.  I thought that if I found the perfect curriculum or used the "best" strategy, then the students would learn at unprecedented levels. Early in my career, I dove deeply into standardized testing and data.  Then, I was an early adopter of the iPad and personalized technology.  Afterward, I flipped my classroom. If there has been a buzz-worthy idea, I have implemented it.  As I reflect back on those ideas, I wonder--what the hell do I actually stand for?

I know I am not the only one with a similar story.  Many teachers leave the profession.  Many more burn out.  It’s not for a lack of caring; often it's because we care so much.  But, I think the problem is that we don’t have a common mission or understanding of our core beliefs.  Because of a lack of a clear mission, we continue to make large sweeping changes almost every year.

What is the purpose of school? 

Seriously, what do I stand for? If I don’t have a clear purpose, then the buzz-worthy topics will continue to pressure me to adopt the latest trends prompting me to redesign the courses I teach every few years.  As I am sifting through my last decade of ideas, I come to one core belief that is above everything else: learning. I value learning.

As I reflect on all of the fads I've adopted and reworking of courses I've done, I wonder what my beliefs about meaningful learning are.  If I had a core understanding of my own definition of what meaningful learning is, would I have been so quick to make changes?

Now, the only ideas I am interested in are ones about learning. Because of that singular belief, I conclude that schools exist to create conditions that maximize learning.  But what do I mean by learning?

What do you mean by meaning learning?

I have struggled with my own definitions of learning.  It's not easy to come up with a definition of it that really holds any value. It's easier at the moment to adopt a new fad rather than define learning and develop a mission statement.  But for me, I'm at a point in my journey where I need to define it.  Here is what I have come up with. Meaningful learning is being engaged in the process of developing new understandings or skill sets that are useful in our lives.

While people can discuss at length what should be learned, there needs to be common understandings in a school community about what learning is for those conversations to be meaningful.  I firmly believe that a lot of energy can be saved in schools if people sat down and talked about their beliefs on learning.

What do I mean by engaged? 

Engagement is one of the major buzzwords in education and is used in so many different contexts.  Because of that, it's almost lost all meaning.  I don’t want to create a superficial definition that crumbles the second I doubt what I am doing.

Most of what we "learn" is lost.  As I think about everything I have "learned," or more appropriately, been exposed to in my lifetime, almost all of it is consumed and forgotten quickly.  How many times have I looked something up and forgotten it in a matter of hours?  The same goes for the students in the classroom.  I tell them things and most of the time within a day they have forgotten it! This is because true learning that is meaningful and lasting does not take place unless there is a personal agency in the new understanding that is purposeful beyond the moment.  This means that people must have a desire to learn the topic or skill.

Therefore, engagement means the desire to learn.  True engagement in learning boils down to desire.   If a person has a desire to learn the topic or skill, they are engaged.

What do I mean by useful in our lives?

The dreaded question: "Why are we learning this?"  I'm big on explaining to my students why I'm having them learn something.  I explain the role it has in the subject and the overall payoff.  Even when I am really good at setting the stage, I think most students "learn" for assessments, grades, projects, or the vague possibility of a future payoff because there isn't much personal agency in all of the things I am teaching them. I dictated the exact topic they will learn.  Over the past few years, I noticed that when I ask greater opened ended provocations, the students are more prone to exploring the topic in meaningful ways.  But when the learning is disproportionately for a grade, something is lost.  The learning has to go somewhere other than for school purposes for it to be meaningful and is most powerful when it is going someplace useful for their lives.

There is a natural curiosity to engaged learning that drives the use.  If the provocation is thought-provoking or there is a real-world problem to solve, the use is in the forefront.  The use then is to gain new insights into the world or to create a solution.  Either way, the engaged learner has an intrinsic purpose.

What if we don't have a common belief about learning?

Simply put, trust is lost.  Trust is lost between any combination of administration, teachers, guardians, students, and businesses.  When the stakeholders in a learning community don't share common beliefs about learning, we lose respect for each other.  For example, while we wonder why students aren’t learning a topic the students are wondering why they are learning the topic. We will continue to focus on niche items in learning or topics that distract us from our focus on meaningful learning.  Some of these topics are deadlines, discipline, social-emotional issues, implementing technology, arguing over curriculum, assessments, bell ringers, projects, and rigor.  But the focus should be on learning.

Call to Action

I challenge you to write down your beliefs about learning.  Do so without concern for assessment, curriculum, discipline, or your own educational experience.  Just write down what you believe about meaningful learning. I look forward to reading, hearing, and discussing your thoughts!

Thank You

A huge thank you to Kim Miklusak for editing this post and her constant willingness to debate, to my district for creating conditions for me to have great discussions with my colleagues and community, and to the Modern Learners community for pushing me to find my voice.